


At the End of Limbo

by Articianne



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Post-Canon, Spoilers, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:13:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21979387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Articianne/pseuds/Articianne
Summary: The suns set each night before rising in the morning. Each day was the same, a penance for a tragedy unspoken that Rey couldn't put her finger on. There was something she couldn't remember, something the whole galaxy had forgotten. When she found an old datapad stowed away mysteriously in an obscure place on the Lars moisture farm, the gaps and hazes in her memory began to come together.Or: Nearly a year after the Emperor is destroyed, Rey's self-imposed dams break; the voice of Ben Solo finally awakens in her mind, but the rest of the galaxy needs help to remember him.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 15
Kudos: 103





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> if star wars can make stuff up, so can i. here we go!

There was a terrible, terrible ache in her chest. An echo in her mind matched it, thudding between her ears and, for the first moment before the realization, her lips thudded with it. Her eyes traced the clothes on the ground in front of her. Her heart cried, sobbed, part of it missing, part of it continuing to beat even though each one shot pain through to the tips of her fingers.

“No,” said Rey. Blinking, she felt the gloss of a tear slip from her eye. One, two. “No… nooo. No—” Her quivering hands pressed into the shirt in front of her. 

_Ben,_ she thought weakly. But the tendril of heat that had dominated her mind for the past year was colder, the last of his soul slipping away. “No,” she said again, whispering it like it was the only word she knew. “Please, no— _please_ —”

She could heal him—she—there wasn’t a body to heal, but—but it had to be possible—

With all her might, she clung with the Force as hard as she could to the sliver she had of him left. _Don’t leave me,_ she begged. _You can’t. Ben, you can’t_ —

If any part of him was still with her, he was quiet.

 _Please_ —

Scrambling to her feet, she clutched his clothes to her front. Her books were nearby, on Luke’s X-Wing. There was something there. There had to be.

_Hold on. Ben, please, hold on. Wait for me!_

Seconds blurred into minutes, minutes into heartbeats that struck terror into her chest each time she breathed. He was barely there, and her head thundered with pain from trying to hold on. And finally she had made it out to the X-Wing with exhaustion tearing from her bones.

With a grunt, she pulled the texts from the satchel in the cockpit, sniffing, barely even able to read the words. _Please. Please please please please._ If her tearing through the texts cut her fingers, she felt none of it. The hole in her chest obscured everything.

Page after page, there was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing to pull him back, nothing to ease the emptiness that threatened to kill her. _Please don’t go,_ she begged. _Please don’t go, Ben, please don’t go. Be with me. Be with me_ —

The texts were useless, and she sniffed, choked on a sob. “Be with m-me. Be with me—be w-with—why are—why? Why—”

_Rey._

Her heart stung. “B-Ben—” Was it his voice? She couldn’t tell. It was indiscriminate to any form, hollow. She never hated any moment more than what sort of hell she was living now. “If you’re not Ben,” she said aloud, gritting through the tears, “please go away.”

 _Release your mind of memory._ Whoever it was, they were staying, and each word was a blaster shot into her stomach. It couldn’t be Ben, because he was still cold, slipping away from her, bit by bit.

“M-memories,” gasped Rey. “W-what does that mean?”

_Opaque and eternal._

What in the galaxy did that _mean?_

“I’m n-not releasing anything. Never,” said Rey aloud. 

_Bring back the half from the Force so fertile._

The world numbed around her at the words ringing just outside her ears. What?

 _Release your mind of memory, opaque and eternal._ Again the words were breathing into her. Each word shot pain behind her eyes. _Bring back the half from the Force so fertile._

It was an instinct, something primal and hot. With a trembling inhale of the static-laden air, Rey clung desperately to the tendril of Ben in her mind. The memory of him, every moment of the past year and every sensation that she’d ever felt, came unbidden to the front of her mind. _Please don’t go._ _Don’t go. Stay._

A damp calm enveloped her as Rey’s lips formed the words. “Release your mind of memory.”

The words shot no pain through her when she said them aloud. They sunk into her stomach like the contents of a medpac. Ren—Ben?—blurred in front of her hands.

“Opaque and eternal.”

Rey had been holding onto something. It was odd; she knew what she was holding onto, but she wasn’t sure what the word was.

“Bring back the half—”

There was something in her mind, warm. She felt full, like she’d eaten the best meal of her life.

“—from the Force so fertile.”

Blinking, she stood up. There were clothes in her hands. She didn’t know who they belonged to; they were black, a hole peculiarly scorched through the front and back of the shirt in the same spot, as though her lightsaber had pierced through the clothes. 

She didn’t know whose they were. Maybe Finn or Poe would know, or Master Luke. They belonged to someone, surely. But she couldn’t remember who it was.

As she kicked the X-Wing into hyperdrive, there was a hum in her ears. She wasn’t sure if it was the Force or someone else who settled into place in the back of her mind, as though they had never left.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have the whole plot drafted out, so it's just a matter of me keeping up with this. we'll see how it goes! (apologies for typos and all that, these barely get edited before i post them.)


	2. a light in the dark

**one standard year later**

On the edge of the horizon was the slightest haze, the sort that shook the air in the desert heat. There was a green tinge to the sand, as though it were ill, sickly from the heat.

A slick thin trail of sweat gathered on Rey’s temple before slipping past her ear. She rubbed away at where it had been, grimacing through the binary sunlight as she tended to one of the vaporators. The pipes were clogged from years of disuse, and after a couple days debating on how to get the farm started again, she figured she’d pull in the credits to replace the pipes entirely.

The moisture farm was old. If she had done her homework properly, it was Master Luke’s—or rather, his uncle’s farm. It was a much more peaceful life than the one she’d lived on Jakku, because she could take the time to enjoy it, sit among the bits of vegetation growing in the farm. Originally, she'd intended on burying Luke and Leia's sabers within the farm, though there seemed no place suitable to put them. So she'd dug them into the sand and tried to settle into the hut herself, tried to ease the peculiar tremor in her gut that would only soothe from the meditative Force in the back of her mind if she focused on it. 

It worked, for the most part. She tried to get off-world as much as she could. Tatooine was no Jakku, but it was suffocating in its own right. A penance for her fight against the emperor—she would never think of him as her grandfather. As far as she was concerned, she was from Jakku, and nowhere else.

A penance for her fight.

It was odd—she could remember no loss from her time on Exegol, but everything in her begged her to mourn. For what reason? Rey could have stayed with the Resistance. There was nothing keeping her from celebrating and going to work with the rest of them to put the First Order away for good.

But she wanted to cry. She had the entire time she'd been here.

Rey pushed the stray hairs from her forehead in sweat and blew a stream of cold her from her lips to her collarbone. It was hot, but in a couple hours the suns would dip and the desert chill would creep into a frost. If she could fix these last pipes before dusk fell, she'd be satisfied and set herself away to sleep. 

A beep sounded from her right. Twisting her head, Rey found BB-8 curiously rolling around another vaporator she'd tried fixing earlier. It was ruined, but Rey couldn't understand why for the life of her. She'd resolved to junk it tomorrow for parts (some habits were impossible to break) and simply install another one, but BB-8's increasingly bewildered tone was getting louder.

 _Click._ Rey frowned, dusting off her hands from the sand on her trousers. "Beebee-Ate?"

The droid hummed.

"Well, it's not going to start with you running circles around it," she murmured, bending at the waist. There was nothing really different with it than the other ones, and even after clearing the pipes out, it refused to work. The only problem was it tilted slightly on the otherwise flat ground of the farm. 

BB-8 clicked again, this time nudging into her calf. "Let's take a look, then," said Rey. "Come on. Hold a light up for me, I can't see under this that well. _No,_ the other one," she added when BB-8 had focused the infrared under her hands.

When she could properly see thanks to BB-8 and the suns continued to set, she saw that there was a couple things haphazardly shoved beneath one side of the vaporator. An old datapad, and something small. It looked suspiciously like the wayfinder she'd needed to find the emperor, but a bit more intricate. A holocron? She'd seen a couple of those during her training with Leia.

Her head prickled at the thought of the wayfinder. Shaking it off, she flattened her lips, tried to get a good stable hold on both the datapad and holocron while keeping the vaporator up.

BB-8 yelped and jammed a wrench under the vaporator before Rey could notice that it was buckling. "Thanks, Beebee," she grunted, barely managing to finagle the two objects. "Just—eugh—almost there." They nearly slipped from her aching fingers but she managed it, and—feeling her face turn red with effort—unlodged them from under the vaporator. With a brief moment to revel at herself, she pushed herself away and BB-8 let the vaporator drop back to the ground. 

The holocron was riddled with sand, old, untouched for what was obviously many long years. The datapad itself was still working, but also had sand in its grooves, and she fathomed it had remained unused for a couple standard decades at the very least. Who had dropped them there? How had they been shoved so thoroughly under the vaporator, and when? The only person she could think of was Luke, and it must have been before he’d fled the Jedi Academy that had been destroyed. 

A small pain again at the back of her head, a fog. Like she wasn’t supposed to reflect on it. She blinked it away, frustrated. There were parts of her memory after she left Jakku that were hazy, awful clouded things, that seemed to affect her way more than it did the others. As far as she knew, Poe and Finn and everyone she knew didn’t have the same sort of daze that she had, as if she was missing half of her. 

She set the holocron and datapad aside. The vaporator was still waiting for her, so Rey checked its diagnostics and ran it through some tests. It switched on as if the only problem had been some time-worn schematics before chugging to life completely, and she leaned back, satisfied. “Alright, Beebee-Ate. Let’s go inside.”

BB-8 chirped and rolled ellipses behind her happily as she tucked the holocron and datapad into her satchel before rising to her feet.

* * *

Scents of her simple dinner arose from the tiny kitchen. She’d made herself a good garden here with the farm. While a caf simmered on the stove, she sat down at the small table and set the holocron aside. It didn’t seem to want to open just yet, and her interest was piqued instead by the files on the datapad.

BB-8 chirped, rolling away to inspect her food for tomorrow. With a smile, she turned to the datapad, relishing the older technology in her hands. It was like a little piece of her scavenging life from before. Something she didn’t miss, but nostalgic for how simple her life had been.

The datapad turned on and Rey swiped through the contents. The earliest file on it was a voice transcription of something, and she decided to give it a go. A voice eased out of the datapad a moment later.

" _Leia, he's beautiful._ " A younger Luke, if Rey hazarded a guess. He sounded ages younger, unworn by the years he would spend in hiding after his academy would be destroyed. 

" _Isn't he_?"

" _He looks just like you_."

" _He looks like Han. I can already see it. I just…"_

The words brought forth an ill sensation; Rey's stomach turned over itself. _Who_ looked like Han? Clearly an infant boy. She didn’t… she didn’t remember Han and Leia having a child. She could barely remember Han. Wasn’t that… wasn’t that _wrong,_ to have missed such an important detail? And yet as far as Rey knew, no one seemed to acknowledge it as any sort of problem. Had they all… forgotten it, too? What sort of thing in the Force could cause this?

" _What's wrong_?" continued Luke. 

" _... I… I'm not sure. He's so beautiful, asleep like this, and when he's awake I just feel like I never want him to grow old. But Luke…"_

A beat; Rey didn't dare to breathe.

" _I feel uneasy,"_ admitted Leia's voice in a whisper.

" _So you feel it too."_

" _I don't know what it is. It's… very quiet."_

" _We can only hope it's nothing, Leia. And I'll still train him, and hopefully... hopefully he'll be alright._ " After a moment—" _What's his name? Can't imagine you would name him Skywalker, no matter how sensitive he is to the Force."_

" _If it weren't for Han, he'd be an Organa,"_ said Leia. " _And there's no way I'm naming him after you, Luke. No matter how much I love you. That name of yours begs for trouble."_

 _"Fair point,"_ Luke acquiesced.

A gurgle sounded off-screen. Something in Rey's heart broke. How could anyone forget about something so sweet?

" _So. He's a Solo, huh."_

" _I told you he looks like Han. Oh, Ben, honey, don't pull so hard on your uncle's hair."_

_"It's too long anyway, might as well just hand him some scissors to cut it all off—"_

_"If you put a blade in his hand before he's ready, so help me, Luke, I'll cut off your other hand."_

But Rey had stopped breathing at the word "Ben".

_"Don't say something like that in front of the little guy, Leia, he'll think you mean it. Where in the hell is Han, anyway?"_

_"He's getting Chewie. Something about getting Ben into the cockpit first thing, which is ridiculous, he's barely even been in his own bed!"_

_"It's Han. Are you surprised?"_

The file was still going, but Rey had stopped listening minutes ago. 

* * *

She hadn’t spoken to Luke in a year.

There wasn’t a reason to, really. She’d sequestered herself on Tatooine with the occasional missions with Rose whenever she was called over, but otherwise she investigated the moisture farm, learning everything she could that she didn’t have to ask Luke and Leia about. 

But there was no way she knew what was going on with her. Datapad and holocron in hand, she descended to Ahch-To in Luke’s x-wing (making a note to ask Poe about the Falcon later if she’d be making more frequent trips from Tatooine) and nearly tripped over herself getting out of the cockpit. Luke was nowhere to be found; she twisted her lips and kicked a rock, gripping the devices between her fingers until her knuckles went white.

“Luke!” she yelled, not bothering with pleasantries. “LUKE!”

No answer. From the cockpit BB-8 made a questioning beep, and Rey softened. “No, I’m not mad, I just—it hurts. My head. Luke, please!” she added, exasperated, sliding down the side of the cockpit to the grass. “Ugh. Ugh!”

Now that she wasn’t strapped into the cockpit, wasn’t letting the blur of hyperspeed distract her, the pain in the back of her head was too much to bear. Something was trying to burst out and she had no idea what to do. “Ow,” she whispered. There was only one name in her head, one that she wanted to place a face to, but couldn’t at all, in no way, shape, or form. Ben Solo.

She tried it. Rey didn’t have any other option. “Be with me,” she said, barely intelligible. “Be with me, be with me, be with me, _bewithmebewithmebewithme._ ”

“Rey, you can stop muttering to yourself.”

“Luke!” Rey shot up from her seat on the wet grass the same time BB-8 exclaimed, now beside her. “You have to me help me.”

His eyebrows curved upward, his blue form untouched by the mild, late-rain breeze. Rey wracked her aching mind, trying to word it, when she decided it would simply be better to show him. Wordlessly, she held up the datapad. 

For a moment, old Luke Skywalker appeared very bewildered. Then he looked very, very sorry. “Oh, Rey.”

“What is it?”

“It’s… old. Thirty standard years old, give or take a year.”

“But _what is it,_ ” she repeated. A crack in the end of her question gave her away. “Please, tell me what it is. I think I’m supposed to remember but I don’t.”

“No one remembers any of it, Rey,” said Luke. “The contents of that datapad are about Ben Solo, from when he was a child.”

Ben Solo.

“How did you even find this? Last I saw it was with Leia, and that was…" Awestruck, he shook his head. “Ten… fifteen years ago. Somewhere around there.”

Rey ignored his question and sped forward with her own. “Who’s Ben? What happened?”

In that moment, Luke looked almost the saddest she had ever seen him. The wind blew past him, through his intangible body. The distant sounds of porgs filled in after her questions as he kept his mouth tightly shut. But seconds passed, and even the porgs seemed to quiet, waiting for an answer. “I don’t think you want me to tell you.”

“Please,” breathed Rey.

“No.”

“Wh… why? _Why_?”

“It isn’t my place,” said Luke. “The last time I… I messed things up. You can do it, Rey, you can learn it yourself. You don’t need me to do it.”

“Of course I do! How am I even supposed to go about learning something like this?”

“With patience!”

“My head _hurts,_ my heart hurts, everything hurts! It has for a year! All I know is that something happened and it all _hurt_ and then it felt better. And then—little by little—the pain started coming back, like something is inside me and it wants out, _now._ But I don’t know what it is! Why would I—why would I take your name if you can’t _help_ me?”

“I never told you to take my name,” said Luke, growing bitter right back. “You’re _Rey._ Like you told me, you’re just a scavenger from Jakku. But it was helping you cope, and that was what you needed after—”

He froze, then looked very angry with himself.

“After what,” said Rey, slowly.

“Nothing.”

“After _what_?”

“After Ben died,” Luke bit out.

The ache behind her eyes grew. She scrubbed at them helplessly. “Just tell me everything, please. I can’t sit here and think about it—”

“Rey, he won’t come back if you don’t do this yourself.”

What did he know? Did he have this splitting headache in _his_ blue, transparent head? Was his memory contorted and fogged, like someone had dunked his head into the murkiest water on Endor? Eyes prickling, Rey snatched her staff and whipped away. "Whatever you say, Master Luke." Without another word to him, she stormed off to climb the steps higher up into the cliffs of the island, where she knew the Jedi mural was waiting for her.

"Rey," said Luke from behind her. Against her worst judgment, she managed to stop and listen. "You can do it." The words were barely a comfort now, but at least hearing them could help her.

The anger subsided briefly, leaving loneliness and a horrible sensation, where each breath took twice as long and the wind refused to slow. "I hope so," she told Luke, before turning on her heel again and heading up.

He didn't follow her. It took her twenty minutes to reach the Jedi mural inside the cliff, where she saw the two halves make a whole. This seemed at least the best place to start.

She sat down in front of it, watching the stillness of the stones. It was almost hypnotic, but the throbbing between her temples distracted her. _Please, I'll let you out,_ she thought, even though she didn't know what she was talking to. Gingerly setting her satchel and staff aside, she crossed her legs and shut her eyes. Beyond the other opening of the cliff, she felt the light from the dual suns seep into the cliff.

She didn't know how long she sat. Rey tried everything: she'd muttered "be with me" until her lips went dry, she'd gone into a deep meditation, she tried her damnedest to latch onto the foggiest memories and bring them to light. Nothing was working. 

"Ugh!" She collapsed backward on the hard stone. "This is _impossible_!"

As if on cue, the throbbing in her head softened just a bit, seeming to sense her unease. _Thanks a lot,_ she thought, absolutely sarcastic. Pushing herself up to her feet, she slung her satchel and staff once again over her shoulder. 

On the way down, Rey saw Luke. Sparing him no other glance, she marched straight past him and into the huts. She'd stay here until she could figure it out.

* * *

The first day after she'd woken up in the hut on Ahch-To was exactly the same as when she'd arrived. It was impossible to figure anything out, and she exhausted herself with training. When Luke was around, he helped her with some of the physical things, but never about "Ben Solo".

Likewise, the second day proceeded about the same. But nearing her chosen hut in the evening, the wind blew her so forcefully past it and whispered just as loudly in her ear that she dazedly followed to see the same hole in the ground that she barely remembered. The memory was so latent and pushed away, drenched in a fog, that she could only remember it was full of water and contained a peculiar wall of mirrors. 

She shook her head and went back to her hut.

The third day she was ill, and stayed by the fire inside the hut all day. To take pity on her, her head didn't sting with pain, and BB-8 brought back two dead porgs for her to eat that had been caught in whatever cunning scheme the droid had set up.

The fourth day, she went back to the hole in the ground.

Either it was muscle memory, a calling, or both, but Rey dropped into the cave lake and pulled herself up in front of the mirror, sopping wet. She could barely remember anything. But touching the surface, she knew, would bring her inside the vision. Would answer the questions she wanted. Right?

 _You've tried this before, Rey, and it didn't work,_ she thought to herself. _You didn't see your parents. You didn't see the Emperor._

But she had always been simply "Rey". Perhaps asking about something she no longer needed to know, even a couple years ago, was not what she was supposed to do.

With a deep breath, she touched the mirror, and as if in slow-motion, phased into it endlessly. All of her was one. Rey Palpatine. Rey Skywalker. Rey nobody.

She lifted a hand weighed down by the water from the cave and pressed it against the second mirror. "Please… show me Ben Solo."

The mirror shuddered and fogged. There was a figure in the distance, walking closer to her, slowly and with purpose. Their hand pressed forward, meeting the tips of her fingers, and a blinding white light pierced behind Rey’s eyes. “Please show me,” she gasped, her other hand coming up to the mirror before she could double over. Warmth pressed against her other hand, and she saw the faint outline of larger limbs come up directly behind the mirror. 

Behind her eyes the light brightened. “ _Agh_!”

Before she passed out within the endless cave of mirrors, something inside her crumbled, and a hum of heat spread around her limbs. She barely caught sight of the figure in the mirror—Ben Solo—before her eyes rolled into her head and her knees buckled to the hard ground.

* * *

The already dark cave was barely lit when she awoke.

For the first time in a year, though, there was no sting in her mind. Fingers twitched and felt the telltale dried tears on her cheeks, and Rey sniffed through the only headache she had—one of the pressing ones that went away quickly after spending an eternity crying. She must have done it all in her sleep.

There was something in her hand. Around it.

Her eyes blinked open, squinting to her other hand. There was nothing there, but she swore she could feel the heat of something else—some _one_ else—encircling her skin. She could feel longer limbs against her own and a breath against her hair, but nothing her eyes could see. It occurred to her that she was far warmer than she should be, soaking wet inside this damp, dark cave. 

Who…?

Her breath caught in her throat, halfway in her chest and threatening to combust with grief. The name came to her as though the Force itself had decided it was time to break open.

 _I'm sorry,_ came the voice she'd stuffed away for so long.

"Oh, Ben," she choked, curling into the hand entwined with hers, and felt his invisible figure wrap around her own.


	3. it was you who was standing there

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please forgive typos! i tend to go into the chapters and edit them when i'm more awake.

**one and a half standard years ago**

**(six standard months before Exegol)**

_Where are you?_

_Nowhere,_ was the quiet reply. Rey waited, alone and sitting in the main cabin of the Falcon. Then, over their connection, came a sigh. _Dealing with one of the new executives._

_Sounds boring,_ Rey thought. The sensation at his end made her smile, even if she didn't want to. He was bored, just as she'd said. Pryde's pettiness was not as bad as Hux's, but it had nothing to do with Kylo Ren's plans. Which, she suspected, included tracking her down.

_I'm glad this is amusing for you,_ he responded. 

Rey was about to answer that it was, in fact, very funny, before she sobered. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Of course, they could talk to each other, touch each other over distances. She'd had her moments of weakness. Waking up with him in her cot when neither of them had realized they'd bridged in their sleep. Taking a moment to breathe after her lonely training and breathing alongside him, unable to help leaning her head on his shoulder.

_And where are you?_ He turned the question on her, breaking her out of her traitorous thoughts.

_I'm not falling for that again._

_Right, sorry. Where are you so I can come find you? We’ll make a night of it._ The dry tone was obvious even over their connection; Rey snorted despite herself. 

_These_ are _our nights,_ she said after a little while, wordlessly messing around with the strap on her staff. She was waiting for Leia, who had wanted to run through some new ideas with her. 

_Rey…_

_You should focus on your work, Supreme Leader,_ she said, laying down fully on the grass beneath her. _You’ve got a lot of rebellions to suppress._

_And you have lots to start,_ he told her. As though through a murky pane of glass, Rey heard him dismiss Pryde and walk away toward his chambers. _Finally_ , he thought, though it was more towards himself and less towards her.

As he neared his chambers, Rey drew away. There was an unspoken line there, one she absolutely could not cross. She didn't know what his quarters looked like. Were she to stick around, she didn't know how she would speak with him in such a private space.

Rey turned to her side on the grass, waiting for Leia. Inside her, his thudding to his rooms echoed through her limbs. There was a brief moment where as he walked and she stayed still, their breathing synced.

_You can stay_ , he offered, gentle.

Eyes on her fingers, she squeezed her staff's leather strap, watching it try to crinkle.

_You don't have to… I can wait with you,_ he added. 

Rey breathed in, shutting her eyes and feeling where he was at the moment. He was standing before his quarters but hadn't entered yet. Exhaustion ran through his bones. It was telling.

_You're tired,_ she said. 

His response was immediate. _Doesn't matter._

They'd had their disagreements, these past few months. Since their first bond when she was on Ahch-To looking for Luke, they had been connected frequently, numerous times a day, every day. They brought with them the ability to connect even silently, invisible to others, rather than seeing each other when they least expected it (though that continued just as fervently). Nothing seemed to stop it, but at least she could breathe a bit easier when someone—Supreme Leader or otherwise—knew the inner workings of her head and what she wanted, rather than everyone around her, who just made do with vapid guesses. Time sped forward; Rey sometimes looked forward to seeing him, to trying to get him to give it all up and come back with her.

It never worked. He was too hell-bent on doing the same thing on his end.

_You'll wait with me?_ she asked despite herself.

He didn't say anything, but sent a comforting brush against her. A moment later she felt him walk away from his quarters, not entering as they waited. Rey was grateful for it.

When Leia arrived, Rey had been lulled asleep and awoke to Kylo Ren slipping away and Leia watching her with an odd look in her eyes. "You alright?" said the general.

"Mmhmm." The moment had been broken, but as always now—it came with the territory of seeing each other so often—she could sense him staying away. "Yeah. What's first?"

* * *

**present day**

Walking back from the cave to her hut was like swimming through the densest water. It was cold, Rey knew it was. She should have been freezing since her clothes were still wet. 

Yet warmth settled around her, hands on her upper arms, even as she walked.

If Luke had seen her, he wouldn't have been able to catch her attention. Not where she was right now. Stripes of time forgotten were flooding back to Rey, hypercolored and oversaturated before filling out into what she was supposed to remember.

The first thing she remembered hearing from Ben when she'd woken up in the cave was " _I'm sorry I left you._ "

"You came back," she'd gasped aloud, wrapping her arms around his see-through figure. She didn't know what she'd do if she couldn't feel him. "You came back. Oh, Ben."

There'd been kisses on her forehead in response. Kisses on her cheeks and in her hair.

How long she'd spent in that chilled cave, she didn't know, and she doubted he knew himself. Eventually she'd pushed herself up, feeling as though for the first time in a year, she was finally awake. Amazing how what she seemed to need, each time, was here in the darkness of Ahch-To.

Now she was making her way back. BB-8 was nowhere to be seen; Rey had a suspicion that the droid had gone back to the X-wing. And as Rey walked, she felt as though she was in a daze the entire time. No words were exchanged, just the tightest grip of her life around his larger, unseen hand, as though if she let him go he would vanish into thin air. But when they reached her hut, she pulled the drapes aside and brought him in, allowing time to catch up to her.

She didn’t know what this was, and from the brush of his consciousness against hers, Rey could tell he had no better idea than she did.

Rey slid her palm along the invisible hand wrapped around hers, over the large chest she knew was his. Eerily, there was no heartbeat, only an echo of one that mirrored her own. Continuing on, she found his other hand, and hugged it to her chest.

_You're so warm,_ he said, invisible fingers curling around one of her hands. 

Sniffing with a quiet laugh, she pulled away and led him by the same hand to the wall of the hut. Experimentally she laid a free hand against the stones, felt the heat from the fire and the pebbles that unlodged from the grits in the wall by her fingers. 

In the same vein, she felt Ben raise his under her own hand. He was waiting with bated breath, but wouldn't allow himself to hope—she could feel that much. Tentatively, his larger knuckles under her own, he dragged the pads of his fingers along the wall of the hut. Rey didn’t hear the soft grit of stone against his fingers like the sound she had coaxed herself from the pebbles, but knew his fingers were solidly against the surface. 

His voice was tight in between her ears. _I really am somewhere between worlds._

“What do you feel?” 

_Nothing,_ he said. From the way his arm raised a bit, he must have been shrugging a bit helplessly. Ben tried again, tracing something against the wall. True to form Rey felt his hand rise and sink against the ridges of the stones along with his hand beneath hers. _I do feel a wall. But I don’t feel the stone. Or how cold it must be, or if it’s wet._ He bent low to the ground and Rey bent with him as he trailed a finger in the dirt. His finger moved over the small piles, unable to move them or budge the stones from their spots. _I can’t feel this, either._

Rey should have been grateful—and she was—that he was here with her. But he was a prisoner somewhere she couldn’t reach him, somewhere _he_ couldn’t reach the rest of the Galaxy. 

“Ben,” she started, careful with her words. “Was there anyone with you… while you were away?”

Still tracing the ground, Rey heard his answer come from as through behind his curtain of hair. _No_ , he told her. _Not that I know of._

He’d been all alone all that time.

_But I could feel you,_ he continued, finally standing up straight. She moved with him, unwilling to release his hand. _You were there, like you were asleep. I wasn’t sure when you’d wake up, but you did. That’s when you could finally hear me._

She swallowed, feeling the sting and chill of isolation hang over both her and Ben. She stood up, made to reach out to him, perhaps to pull him into an embrace or something else entirely, when there was a yelp from outside and one of the Lanai caretakers ripped the drapes to the side of her doorway. Rey stepped to Ben's side immediately and, with a flash of terror in her gut, felt Ben whip around to the entrance, unable to move out of the way—surely they’d run into him!

But the caretaker ran right past Rey—straight through Ben. He was shock still. Rey forced all thoughts away and listened to the caretaker chatter away with frustration, dropping Rey’s drying clothes into larger satchel by her cot, before she hurried away, pulling the drapes closed as she did so.

And the commotion stopped. Rey stared, bemused, at the drapes. 

_Rey, did you—Rey._ Ben’s voice cut through the air. _They… passed right through me_.

"I think so," said Rey. There was no other sound except for her quiet voice in the hut and the slight breeze rustling the drapes. "Like you weren't even there."

The distant, nearing sound of BB-8 caught Rey's attention and Ben, already tense over their connection, went still again. Inquisitively, the droid peered into the hut.

Rey didn't dare breathe.

_The droid can't see me,_ thought Ben. _Right?_

_No… Beebee-Ate can't see you,_ she replied. But she wasn't sure. “Did you ask the caretakers to bring my clothes here, Beebee-Ate?”

BB-8, affronted, beeped no and rolled into the hut. Several seconds passed with BB-8 explaining whatever situation there was with the Lanai (who had found a heap of her clothes near the X-wing where she’d hadn’t put them away when she’d fallen ill). Beside her, Ben laid a hand on her shoulder. _I’m going to take a look around some parts of the island._

_I’ll see you later,_ she said, though she wanted desperately to go with him. His hand fell away. 

_No, we can go together,_ he decided. _Don’t know what sort of mess either one of us will cause on our own._

She snorted; he was right.

BB-8 asked what she was laughing at.

“Just remembered something funny is all, Beebee,” said Rey gently, and the droid hummed. “What d’you say we have some food?”

* * *

A couple of days passed, the weather dramatically shifting from gentle light from the suns to angry rain and shuddering winds. Rey left nearly no corner of the island untouched; she traveled hand-in-hand with Ben, who was still a tangible, unseen being to her only, and searched tirelessly for any ideas on what had transpired and why. Ben, who had warned her of such, wasn't any more knowledgeable than Rey was. _My studies had never included anything like this,_ he admitted as they sat down in a cove along one of the higher ridges of the temple. It was beating wind outside, whistling along the rocks below. His thumb ran slowly along her knuckles, assuring her he was there. _Even with Luke._ A sigh escaped him in her mind. _Luke…_

"I could… ask him," said Rey softly, leaning into his shoulder. He was firm and just as real as anything she'd felt.

She was wholly unsure about Luke, though, and what he would think of all this. Regret aside, the bad blood had been there when he and Ben had faced off on Crait. Well. At least... it had been on Ben's—Kylo's?—side. 

A couple minutes clocked by. Ben hadn't replied to her yet. That was alright; she wouldn't do anything he wouldn't explicitly agree to.

Even so, she felt his lips on the crown of her head, drawing her closer. _Not yet. I'm not ready,_ said Ben. His fingers tapped against her upper arm where she felt warmth seep into her. 

Eventually Rey felt her neck begin to cramp. Shrugging it away and standing to her feet, she watched the waves as they crashed furiously into spires of stones and old, eroded bridges far far down from where they were.

Ben approached from behind her. He asked something, but she missed it. The winds were singing between the spires at the base of the mountain. Rey stepped closer, and this time Ben said nothing, sensing whatever it was as well as her. 

The winds grew louder.

Between them, the understanding seemed clear. Rey dug her heel into the ground before drawing her weight to the balls of her feet and hopping once, twice in place. Then, with Ben slipping a long arm around her waist, they took off running and leapt blindly from the cove to the spires below.

The spires sped toward them. Rey’s heart was in her throat, gripping to Ben for her life—

—the winds screamed—

—they dropped into the roaring waves and everything went quiet. 

* * *

In the water, Rey couldn’t hear anything.

Ben’s hold around her had vanished and his presence seemed far away. His voice, though, was clearer in her mind, more than anything else. _Where are you_? he asked, a tone of alarm ringing through both of them.

Rey nearly opened her mouth to reply but thought better of it as she tread water, looking up at the seething waves above her head. _I’m still here,_ she thought to him. _Can’t you see me?_

Silence. Rey’s heart thudded in her chest, quickly, the only thing she could hear. She couldn’t hear him at all, and the only thing she could see were the spires descending into the depths of the island, decorated with etchings of old Jedi teachings she couldn’t completely understand.

_Ben?_

Nothing.

_BEN?_ No no no no no. She’d only just gotten him back. Trapped beneath the waves, Rey kicked furiously to the surface, but it never came. 

_Thump._ The waves beat above her head. _Thump thump._ Her heart, scared shitless. _Thump thump thump thump thump._

Aching, Rey stopped trying to swim. She was on fire, every part of her begging her to stop. Her eyes slipped shut. _Where did you go,_ she thought weakly. _Not again—please not again, Ben_ —

A hand behind her neck, pulling her in. Peering through the darker waves, she saw a figure. Solid and clear, Ben was in front of her, eyes wide with concern. He was saying her name but she couldn’t hear him. 

But she could see him.

She could _see_ him.

Fingers acting before she could catch up, she was scrambling for him in the water, eyes locked on his. He seemed to realize she could see him and rapidly caught on, long limbs steadying her balance even in the water. She gained the strength she needed and held onto him for dear life, kicking to the surface. 

Eternity passed as they kicked through the waves. But once Rey had landed her eyes on Ben, Ahch-To didn’t seem to matter. That was apparently all they had needed to get back to the surface. 

She broke with a gasp and immediately broke into a grateful, choking sob. Her hands reached for Ben, but he was nowhere around her. “B-Ben—where—” She peered into the water, coughing against the waves, her legs protesting viciously against every move she made. She could see his legs. Where—

_I’m here,_ came his voice, loudly, in her mind. Rey looked up from the water to where he would be. There was no one in front of her but his hands grasped her cheeks, his lips kissing her temple before holding her up. He kicked harder. Nothing seemed to happen. Still the waves beat around them and Rey’s limbs screamed in retaliation.

“Come o-on,” she gasped, pulling him through the water, seeing his legs trail behind them but no semblance of a body outside the reflection. She shot an arm behind her, propelled them forward with the Force toward one of the spires with a ledge near the base. The second her hand reached the ledge, she threw herself over the side of it, pulling Ben up by his long arms that she couldn’t see, before collapsing and blinking into the dark spots on her vision. 

A couple moments of coughing through the waves that sloshed over the spire’s base passed and she leaned over her elbows, finally— _finally_ —swiveling around to try and find Ben. He was nowhere to be found, but she reached an arm out, feeling for him; her hands grasped into the air before she felt Ben’s finger encircle her own. Biting back a sob, she pulled herself closer, closing her eyes, settling into his lap and embracing him until her arms went numb.

_I don’t know what’s happening_ , he thought to her weakly. She dug her nose into his neck, felt his wet hair curl around her fingers. 

“Neither do I,” she said out loud, reaching for him. She could feel the sopping heavy wet shirt under his fingers. Was he even supposed to have a shirt? In the water, he looked not a day older than he was on Exegol. And his slippery skin. His drenched hair, hanging over his eyes. She pushed the bangs away, her own eyes still closed, acting on instinct. “But you’re still here with me.”

“ _Rey_ ,” he said. He had finally spoken out loud; she felt his jaw work with his words under the pads of her fingers. Ben was trembling. “ _I saw myself in the water. I can see my reflection, even now. But I’m not here. I don’t know what’s happening…”_

Eyes still shut, she slowly traced the slopes of his cheekbones, rising until she knew where his eyes were. There. And gently she brought her hands back down to behind his neck, laying her thumbs along the apple in his throat. 

“ _D_ _on’t know why I got my hopes up,_ ” he said bitterly. She felt him swallow against her thumbs. “ _D_ _on’t know why I thought it would be that easy._ ”

Rey opened her eyes, peeled away to look at the waves grazing over where his legs would be as they hung into the water. In the reflection she saw not only herself but Ben too, weary and pale, leaning against her with his eyes closed. 

She choked on a laugh, because otherwise she would cry. 

“It’s a start,” she murmured, and leaned back into him, letting her eyes slip closed. 

* * *

Awakening to the soft crackle of the fire, Rey opened her eyes and found herself back in her hut. There was a line of her clothes hung near the ceiling that she'd set out earlier to dry from the past few days' worth of rain. 

There was the hunk of durasteel sitting across the fire that she'd been using as a sort of workbench during her stay. She sat up, squinted at it. There was something moving in its reflection that was neither her nor the fire several paces away.

Her eyes widened. There was a dulled figure of Ben inside of it, placing him at the end of her cot. She watched as he moved closer to her, his arm settling in her blanket. " _You're awake_ ," he said.

Rey nodded, then winced at her aching neck. She could only see the faintest, vaguest outline of him in the metal. What she’d give for something to show him better! She saw, though, his hand reach for hers, before stopping; she looked to meet what she could see of his eyes in the durasteel and realized he was waiting for her to take his hand, now that she could see him.

She did, watching their hands clasp together in their blurry forms. He felt even more real to her then.

A beat passed.

“Nope,” she said, shooting up. Ben yelped, dragged halfway to the floor, when Rey refused to let go of his hand. “No! I need more. Where’s that blasted ship? I need a mirror, _something_. Do you know anywhere? I’ll go sit in front of the ocean if I have to. I’ll melt Luke’s entire x-wing into a puddle to make something that’ll work. Come on, come help me.”

“ _Rey_ —”

“I’ll build a whole _wall_ of mirrors, I will,” said Rey. “I’ll _pay_ someone, I have the credits—which finally I can use for _something_ , not like I know what to use Resistance credits for—”

“ _Rey! Ow_ — _can I sit up? Please?_ ”

She looked into the metal again, saw Ben nearly splitting his back in two, legs high in the air from the cot and his chin on the floor. “I’m so sorry!” Rey cried, and helped him sit up. Even as a theoretical ghost she could only see a reflection of, he was huge, lumbering off the cot with limbs scattered everywhere. “Mother of R’iia, you’re heavy, Ben.”

“ _Thanks, I try._ ” It was enough to help her crack a grin, the moment of despair muting itself just the smallest bit. In the reflection, Rey saw him sit back down—normally—on her cot. He rubbed a hand at his temple and, with his other hand, squeezed her fingers together. “ _There has to be an explanation for what I am. Right?”_

“I don’t know,” Rey answered honestly, voice quiet. But it seemed to fill the whole hut up. “I wish I did. I wish I knew what happened with _all_ of this. It was like you disappeared completely, Ben. Like you were… I don’t _know_. Like a hole in everything. A void. In the Force. Even the Force didn’t seem to think you were there.”

_“What did you say?”_ he said sharply. 

Surprised, she said, “You disappeared completely. No one could remember you. I found your name in a datapad.”

Ben hummed. “ _A datapad on Tatooine?_ ” 

“Er—yes.” Did he know it?

“ _I’d stowed it away after I ran from the academy,_ ” he told her. “ _It infuriated me then. I’d like to listen to it sometime, though…. But no. Rey, what did you say after that? The disappearing thing._ ”

She thought back. “Like you were a hole in the Force?”

“ _A void._ ”

“Yeah. That.”

“ _I’ve… heard of that,_ ” said Ben. “ _I don’t know the details. But it’s supposed to be a learned trait, not…_ ”

“Being a void in the Force?” Rey asked, and in the reflection on the durasteel, his blurry head nodded up and down.

“ _I don’t know much about it._ ” His voice was bitter when he admitted it, teeth gritting together. “ _I barely learned anything about it. It’s… something to do with the dark side, I think. I must have heard of it from_ —” He faltered, a tremor shooting through Rey’s fingers from his own. 

He was thinking about Snoke. No, the emperor. 

Rey gave herself a brief second of wishing she could punch the daylights out of the emperor even in death before trying to distract Ben. “Does it explain why you don’t have a body?” She took the chance to ask the question that had been on the tip of her tongue. It finally spilled forward, even though she wasn’t sure if Ben himself knew the answer.

She saw Ben rub the side of his neck. “ _Can’t explain why,_ ” he told her. “ _Again, all I know is that it was a learned trait. And very rare. I can’t think of anyone who could do it._ ”

“If it’s rare, then we don’t know how much of it being ‘a learned trait’ is true.”

In the muddy reflection, he shrugged, otherwise quiet.

“So you’re not a Force ghost, then,” said Rey, mostly to herself. 

“ _I’m a part of you is all I can say,_ ” said Ben. “ _Everything you feel, I feel. Everything you smell, touch, taste… it’s like I’m doing it all myself. But I guess I also have my own moments._ ” She heard a crack; he’d twisted around to snap his shoulder into place with a grunt. “ _That’s better. You need a better mattress,_ ” he said to her. 

“Something bigger for you,” she agreed, squeezing his hand, wishing the metal showed more of his face. A beat passed, the second of domesticity swelling in both of them. Cheeks _surely_ going red, Rey added, “But you can’t feel your surroundings.”

“ _Just you_.” The tender words made it bittersweet. Rey was miserable for him. What sort of life was it to have no control over what you felt? 

He interrupted those thoughts by slipping his hand up, gripping the back of her upper arm, thumb delicate on her skin. “ _Rey, I’ve already lived like a different person for so long. I can keep waiting._ ”

“You shouldn’t have to,” she said vehemently. “You’re supposed to be your own self. You should be able to eat what you want and touch what you want and go where you want—”

“ _And be with who I want,_ ” he said, firm.

Rey went silent, then after a moment: “Yes. Be with who you want.”

“ _So it doesn’t bother me. If I need to be in this form… or lack thereof… as atonement, or whatever the Force wants me to do, I’ll do it. I’m with you._ ”

“But _no one else_ can see you,” she protested, turning away from the reflection and leaning forward with her eyes shut. She could see him better in her mind, and he seemed to agree; he met her halfway, forehead to forehead. “Ben—that’s not fair. It’s not _fair_.”

“ _When did anyone ever see me, really_?”

“You can’t say things like that.” Her voice broke. She dragged her fingers along his cheeks, feeling Ben smile one of those smiles that drew tears to her eyes. 

“ _I don’t want to hurt you. Force knows I’ve done that already too many times._ ”

“As many times as I've done to you,” she said, wiping at her eyes. Why did she keep _crying_? But she knew the answer; the floodgates had opened with his return. She sniffed—and she wouldn’t be surprised if she looked like an absolute mess—and added, “Can you eat?” Rey had been roasting fennel with more porg meat over the past few days but couldn’t recall a moment when he actually ate anything.

“ _No idea._ ”

She kicked a foot in the general direction of the porg meat skewered atop the fire, and he made a noise of disgust. “ _Really_?”

“What?”

“ _Aren’t you tired of porg_?”

“Come on.” More sniffling. “Try it. Don’t make me bring it to you. I’m a weepy mess. It’s all your fault.”

With a brush of a thumb under her eye, wiping a tear away, he moved away from her, disappearing off the side of the reflection. There were three, four seconds of stillness, and then: “ _I can’t move them._ ”

Rey exhaled.

“ _Like I can’t move anything else,_ ” said Ben, still sounding by the fire. “ _I can only affect you. It’s how I carried you back here._ ”

Oh. She’d assumed BB-8 and the Lanai had found a way to bring her back. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Ben hummed. “ _Not eating doesn’t bother me._ _I didn’t eat much for pleasure before, anyway. But I know you enjoy it,_ ” he added, clearly seeing her open her mouth to protest. “ _So there’s always more food for you._ ”

There was no way in hell _that_ sentiment should have made her well up in tears again, but it did. 

“Oh, come _on,_ ” she wailed, and Ben swept her up in another tight hug, and finally—finally!—the tears for the past year came freely. 

* * *

There was a clack at the doorway. BB-8 rolled in and out, just a bit, wondering if it was okay to enter. Still, there wasn’t any indication that the droid could see Ben; in fact, Ben told her silently that he would stand in front of BB-8 and see what would happen. Sure enough, he was as intangible as he was invisible. 

_So much for that,_ thought Ben to her. 

Eyes surely swollen and red, Rey listened to BB-8’s concerned questions. BB-8 was nervous and rightfully so, having barely seen her for much of the time they were on Ahch-To. It was too tedious for a BB unit to get around the cliffs she’d been scaling with Ben near her. 

Then BB-8 asked who she was talking to.

“Just talking to myself, Beebee-Ate,” she said, smiling softly and giving the droid a small tap on the antenna. “You know how I am.”

Sounding wholly unconvinced, BB-8 seemed to let it go. BB-8 retreated to the hunk of durasteel where Ben was visible to Rey as a reflection, but the droid didn’t notice anything. Rey let out a small sigh. _There’s no way anyone will believe me if I say you’re back,_ she said. _I don’t think anyone remembers you still. I don’t even know how I remember you._

_It has to be a void in the Force,_ said Ben. _Whatever that is._

_But why would it choose you?_

_Why would it choose_ us _, Rey?_ he countered. 

She didn’t have an answer for that, and she’d exhausted herself trying to find answers here on Ahch-To. Hell, the whole reason she realized she could see Ben’s reflection in anything was because they’d jumped between the spires from the cove. And Rey had a suspicion she would have seen his reflection in the mirror cave had she turned around to look closer.

She took a moment, paused, frowned. 

The spires.

Hadn’t there been some sort of language on them?

Ben didn’t seem to know. _Too busy trying not to drown before I realized I couldn’t drown,_ he said. 

Well, they had time. As night fell and the suns crept beneath the horizon, BB-8 still by the hunk of metal acting as her workbench, Ben drew Rey against himself and they slipped into her tiny cot, deciding that tomorrow they would head back down to the spires.

* * *

And so they did. The waves were calm this time, the stone spires standing tall and proud from the side of the island. BB-8 had insisted on accompanying Rey this time, offering to keep records of the contents on the spires. She wasn’t sure how much use she’d find out of them but they were there, too conspicuous of an arrangement to be anything else other than man-made. The eroded bridges that weaved between some of them were overgrown with fennel and weeds, untraveled—except perhaps by Luke—for years.

“Six of them,” she told BB-8. “I know one of them has some Jedi teachings on it, but I can’t read it.”

_There’s another one with Sith,_ said Ben. He’d taken off to the other side of the peculiar drop, where three of the six spires formed an arc for one side of the circle. _I think all of the ones on this side are all written in the same language._

_And all of the ones on my side are Jedi teachings_?

_Possibly,_ he answered. _But if this temple is more about the Force than it is about the light side and the dark, then they could be interchangeable._

“Beebee-Ate, we’re going to make a record of all of them,” she said out loud, and the droid made an excited turn in a small circle. “Later I’ll ask Luke what it all means. He has to have seen all of this.”

Ben went silent at this across their bond. _You don’t have to be there for it,_ she assured him.

_Thank you,_ he said after a small while.

It took a few hours for BB-8 to get everything recorded, even the etchings on the stone spires under the water. There _were_ things that she hadn’t seen before, and she resolved to show Luke as soon as she could get it all down from BB-8 onto a file later. She’d have to do it somewhere else—likely at the Resistance where they had all the technology she needed to parse through it—but she’d be back to ask.

As they headed back to the huts (Ben, as always, unnoticed by BB-8), Rey made a detour and told BB-8 to prepare for their departure. She would meet up with Rose for some installments to the Falcon and perhaps finally return to the Resistance. There wasn’t a reason for her to stay on Tatooine much anymore. Her time would be better spent attempting to find Ben’s body and bring him back, fully, to live as he should have.

Ben followed her, not asking where Rey was going as she made her detour from the huts. He knew. They’d both wanted to go back. 

There was only one mirror on this island.

They dropped into the water of the mirror cave, Ben pulling Rey up onto the ground from the depths. Time passed slowly as she stood, hand-in-hand with Ben, making their way to the mirror.

Like he’d never even left, like what she’d seen in the water, there he was. Someone no one else could see: Ben Solo, soul slowly healing from Exegol, whole in the mirror. 

Could they touch in the mirror, too?

She extended her hand and Ben’s and pressed their fingers against the mirror. At once, they were inside it.

He was there. Beside her, clear to her very eyes. A hundred of him—a thousand. Him and her, both within the mirror. “You’re trapped,” whispered Rey. “But at least I can still find you. At least I can find _someone_ . At least it’s you.” _At least it's you,_ whispered the mirror over and over.

“ _You’ll get me out_ ,” said Ben, eyes bright for her. Those eyes soaked her in, eyes she could finally see clearly. 

“I _have_ to get you out.” With that, Rey pulled him in, meeting his lips with hers. In that moment, she wanted to stay there forever, her and the thousand other copies. Something lit through her fingers, something made the hair stand from the back of her neck, something something _something._ It was always something—

It felt like power. For ages she’d trained, not knowing what else to do. But with half of her missing, a half that she’d only just gotten back, it was coming back to her, little by little. 

Rey ripped away from him. Ben, wide-eyed and—bless his heart—a bit annoyed, said, _“What?”_

“I know how to give you a body,” she said breathlessly. “Well—no. I don’t know. But I—I did it once on accident. Accidentally dreamt up Luke and punched him.”

_“What?”_ said Ben again.

“No. I mean I—I made him. It wasn’t really him.” She kissed him again, and right when Ben got back into it, she pulled back (Ben groaned) and said, “I made him and then I punched him. It helped, really. Though I don’t know how I did it. I don’t think it was a light side thing. I mean, I’m always so angry with Luke, honestly, so I don’t know how that would be—”

“ _Can we stop talking about Luke—_ ”

“Ah! You’re right. But I could _make_ you, I think. Maybe some sort of phantom body,” said Rey, not knowing she was bouncing a bit in place until Ben steadied her.

_“Rey, can I please kiss you?”_ he said. _“Properly?”_

She shut her mouth, nodded mutely, and he leaned in to do it properly as he’d asked.

* * *

Unbeknownst to any of them, on Exegol, the lightning began to worsen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's very weird for me to write "ben" and not "kylo" because i love the kylo persona (and wish they were more connected and similar than they were in film) but i love ben solo too and want to give him a big fat hug.
> 
> and we chug along! return to the resistance next chap.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! I'm "articianne" everywhere, and on tumblr I have a sideblog: "haikoui".


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